The Wire

Series Similar to The Wire

If you enjoyed The Wire, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. The Sopranos

   1999 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.9), also on HBO.

   The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: Like 1999's other screen touchstone, American Beauty, the HBO series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.

2. The Shield

   2002 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.6).

   Detective Vic Mackey is the leader of an elite Strike Team unit, a group of cops effective at eliminating crime but also operating under Vic's own set of rules. But his rules sometimes cross the fine line between legal and illegal. Now the precinct has a new captain who doesn't like Vic's tactics and wants to bust him off the force - even as the captain finds himself going to Vic for help whenever the going gets rough.

3. Oz

   1997 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.7), also on HBO.

   HBO's violent men-behind-bars drama is an addictive, testosterone-driven soap opera for guys. The eight episodes of the first season set the style for the show: a massive cast of a vivid characters on both sides of the bars, four or five stories unleashed at a breakneck pace and framed by angry, oddball introductions, and a soaring casualty rate. Created by Homicide producer Tom Fontana, this drama quickly earned its rightful reputation as the most brutal show on TV. It's simple chemistry: combine volatile ingredients in a confined space, shut tight, and shake.

4. Snowfall

   2017 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8).

   Los Angeles, 1983. A storm is coming and it's name is crack. Snowfall is a one-hour drama set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and it's ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it. The story follows three characters on a violent collision course: Franklin Saint, young street entrepreneur on a quest for power; Gustavo "El Oso" Zapata, a Mexican wrestler caught up in a power struggle within a crime family; Teddy McDonald, a CIA operative running from a dark past who begins an off-book operation to fund the Nicaraguan Contras and Lucia Villanueva, the self-possessed daughter of a Mexican crime lord.

5. Boardwalk Empire

   2010 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.4), also on HBO.

   As the country struggles to cope with the Great Depression and the end of Prohibition looms, Nucky Thompson looks to legitimize himself through alliances with liquor producers, while rivals Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky seek to consolidate their power in the wake of Arnold Rothstein's death and eliminate all competition - by any means necessary on Boardwalk Empire.

6. The Penguin

   2024 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8), also on HBO.

   Starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb (aka The Penguin), the DC Studios series continues filmmaker Matt Reeves' The Batman epic crime saga that began with Warner Bros. Pictures' global blockbuster The Batman. Developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, the series centers on the character played by Farrell in the film.

7. We Own This City

   2022 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, also on HBO.

   We Own This City chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work. 

8. Breaking Bad

   2008 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (9.2).

   Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White, a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife and teenage son who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family's financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White's releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

9. Fargo

   2014 · Drama, Comedy, Crime · returning

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.6).

   Fargo is a seasonal anthology crime drama with some dark comical elements, inspired by the film Fargo written by the Coen brothers. Each season follows a new case and new characters, all entrenched in the trademark humor, murder and "Minnesota nice" that has made the film an enduring classic.

10. Deadwood

    2004 · Drama, Crime, Western · ended

    Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.7), also on HBO.

    The outlaw camp of Deadwood marches slowly towards civilization, facing its first elections. But the power struggles continue over everything in Deadwood—influence, money, and whores—as the founding camp members form strategic alliances to face down the threat of a powerful newcomer, seeking to remake Deadwood in his image.